The Mercian Regiment was formed a year after the 2006 deployment of British troops to Helmand. Since then its three battalions have spent almost four years in southern Afghanistan.

A service of commemoration at Litchfield Cathedral today marks the return of the 3rd Battalion after a final nine-month tour. It is the end of an era for the Mercian Regiment and, rarely noticed back in Britain, the last days of just over a decade of continuous war for the armed forces.

Not for a half century has any generation of British soldiers seen similar levels of sustained combat — with the